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link vs import

I was just wondering...
All things being the same ( that is assuming you are targeting the same media, and not trying to hide stuff from v4 browsers?!?) what is the benefit of using a link reference to a style sheet vs using an @import?

Netscape 6+ does recognise import, it is only the really old versions of Netscape that no one uses any more that don't.

Somewhere in one of the standards it says that there is only supposed to be one active <link> to CSS in a web page at a time with the others being treated as alternates (or for other media) but none of the web browsers I have seen actually treat it that way.

Using @import would make things easier if you are offering alternate stylesheets through having several link tags and allowing people to switch between them from their View menu.

Somewhere in one of the standards it says that there is only supposed to be one active <link> to CSS in a web page at a time with the others being treated as alternates (or for other media) but none of the web browsers I have seen actually treat it that way.

I've never seen that written anywhere in the specs Are you sure you are not confusing it with "preferred" or "alternate" stylesheets of which there can only be one (or one group) active.

I suppose the practical reason why I brought this up was because someone commented on all the @imports i had on my HTML code ( I guess I neglected the fact I could use @imports within a style sheet) and also because I wondered if that was a more elegant way to override "active" rules. By that I mean, let say you have a landing page, the internal pages have slightly different styles ( let's say background colors, for example) and or maybe altered layout elements. The way I currently handle this is to have a @import main.css followed by an @import overide1.css, @importoverride2.css, and so on.

You can override anyway you like but it all depends on specificity and if it has enough weight to override the previously set style. Just because you call an override stylesheet after the main one doesn't mean it will work.